Nenilava, Prophetess of Madagascar: Her Life and the Ongoing Revival She Inspired

By James B. Vigen and Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

Before she was baptized or knew anything about Christ, young Nenilava was called by Jesus to preach and exorcise in his name. At the age of twenty, newly married to a Lutheran catechist, she heard Jesus prompting her to intervene in a case of demon possession, and from there her ministry spread like wildfire. She spent the next sixty years of her life traveling around her native Madagascar, proclaiming Jesus' victory over sin, guilt, and evil, and bringing countless people to faith.

In this book, her firsthand account of her early ministry, as told to a Malagasy pastor, appears for the first time in English. Complementing the immediacy of her narrative, former missionary in Madagascar, James B. Vigen, recounts the last thirty years of Nenilava's life and describes the extraordinary impact of this illiterate peasant woman on African Christianity. Sarah Hinlicky Wilson concludes the book with a far-reaching exploration of demon possession, healing from illness and sin, emergent offices of ministry, and the relevance of Nenilava for Western Christianity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Release date: Dec 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781725273290

James B. Vigen

James B. Vigen is a retired ELCA pastor living in Orangeburg, South Carolina. Vigen served as a missionary in Madagascar from 1978–1996, where he served as an evangelist and later a seminary director and professor. Vigen has also served as a pastor of an ecumenical, English-speaking congregation in Stavanger, Norway, and an adjunct professor at the School of Mission and Theology of the Norwegian Missionary Society. Vigen authored the articles on the Fifohazana and on Madagascar for the Dictionary of Luther and the Lutheran Traditions (2017).

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Introduction

—Sarah Hinlicky Wilson

I first became aware of Madagascar during my childhood through photos of its strange and wondrous animals, and not, like the generation after me, through a Disney movie of the same name that has nothing whatsoever to do with the island nation.

Many, many years after my first glimpses of lemurs and chameleons, in 2013, I met my first Malagasy in person, Toromaree Mananato. She was a participant in the annual Studying Luther in Wittenberg seminar that I have taught every November since 2009 with Theodor Dieter, my colleague at the Institute for Ecumenical Research in Strasbourg, France. Toromaree was present at the behest of the Malagasy Lutheran Church (MLC), where she was serving as the national secretary of the women’s association (and soon to be vice-general secretary of the MLC). When she told me where she was from, I mentioned the animal pictures I’d seen and how I’d always thought Madagascar would be an interesting place to visit. She said, without skipping a beat, OK! I’ll invite you! Three days later I had a letter from Rakoto Endor Modeste, president of the MLC, asking me to come and teach a weeklong course at the Lutheran Graduate School of Theology in Ivory, Fianarantsoa.

By this time I knew that there was a sizable Lutheran church in Madagascar, with a membership of at least four million, which struck me as almost as strange and wondrous as the lemurs and chameleons. My first encounter with Lutheran missions to Madagascar came through none other than James B. Vigen, my co-author on this volume. I met him in circumstances that in no way forecast our eventual collaboration: he had just returned from Madagascar and was serving a congregation in the city where my grandmother was dying an untimely death. I was in college at the time; I have a blurry but grateful memory of Vigen’s kind ministrations to my family while we were beside ourselves with shock and grief. Having now lived abroad and repatriated a few times myself, I can only imagine his own disorientation at being back in the United States after eighteen years in Madagascar.

In any event, by the time I was preparing for my visit to teach in Madagascar in the fall of 2014—a trip on which my husband Andrew L. Wilson would accompany me as co-teacher, and also our son and my husband’s parents—I had gotten up to speed on the Lutheranism of Madagascar. It arose in the late nineteenth century due to missions from both Norwegians and Norwegian-Americans. To hear the Malagasy tell it, the principal difference between them was that the former forbade beer while the latter allowed it in moderation! Whatever the inevitable strains between missionaries and locals, the cooperation was sufficiently strong over the succeeding decades to have all but eclipsed a pattern seen much more commonly on the continent of Africa, namely the departure of the recipients of missions to establish independent churches, African-Initiated Churches as they are often called. By and large Malagasy Christians adhere to the historic churches that brought the gospel to them: in addition to Lutherans there are many Roman Catholics, Reformed, and Anglicans, as well as assorted other traditions and denominations.

Two things in particular impressed me about Malagasy Lutheranism and elicited further interest. First was the fact that revival (fifohazana in Malagasy) was not only well-integrated into a tradition that I thought, based on my own experience, to be anathema to revivalism of any kind, but that the MLC had undergone four revivals already in its short existence—the first only thirty years after the first Lutheran missionaries arrived—and that all four revivals were still alive in one form or another! Clearly, this was not the circus tent or anxious bench of the American awakenings. My notion of revival and its relationship to the institution of the church needed serious reconsideration.

And second was the fact that you could not talk about Malagasy Lutheranism or its revivals at all without talking about Nenilava.

Here again I’d heard just enough to know that I should ask about Nenilava when I arrived in Madagascar. Béatrice Bengtsson at the Lutheran World Federation, where Malagasy pastor and scholar Péri Rasolondraibe had recently left a ten-year stint as director of the department for mission and development, told me how he always spoke passionately of Nenilava’s formative impact on his life and work. Others mentioned to me—or maybe they were trying to warn me?—that Nenilava had been an exorcist, and how that was still a major aspect of religious practice in Malagasy Lutheranism. Needless to say, I touched down in Antananarivo anxious to learn more!

It is no exaggeration to say that I felt Nenilava’s presence everywhere. The first and most obvious sign was, in fact, a sign. A plaque at the MLC compound in the Isoraka neighborhood of the capital honors her by her given name, Volahavana Germaine, Revival Leader, alongside memorials to other foreign missionaries and local luminaries in the history of the MLC. My family and I were taken to the healing camp at Ambohibao-Antehiroka (the successor to the toby initially located at 67 Hectares) that Nenilava founded and saw both where she lived and the current patients in residence at the toby.

Once we got to Fianarantsoa and had a week with students, I asked them what, if anything, they knew about her. Everyone had a story! One told me how she had arranged the match between his parents, which I later learned was one of her many ministerial interventions in people’s lives. Nearly all the students I met were shepherd-exorcists (mpiandry in Malagasy) in the Ankaramalaza revival tradition—only later would I meet church leaders who came from the other strands of revival—and they talked joyfully of the kind of ministry they did, which most certainly included exorcism. My husband and I attended two worship services that included the spiritual work (asa in Malagasy) that characterizes the mpiandry of Ankaramalaza. One of the services took place at a prison and was attended by about half the male inmates (and a very bare minimum of security guards). The other was a standard weekday worship service, at which the mpiandry made me, along with the rest of the congregation, recipient of the exorcistic action!

The fascination with Nenilava stayed with me, but I did not expect to visit Madagascar again after that. My family moved back to the States from France, and then from the States to Japan, and there is a limit to the number of countries and churches one can keep an eye on. However, even after leaving my full-time position at the Institute for Ecumenical Research, I have remained a consultant to the International Lutheran-Pentecostal Dialogue and taken part in its annual meetings. And so it was in this capacity that I made my second trip to Madagascar in the fall of 2019.

In retrospect I can see that my first trip was nonstop shock at the new: from the poverty to the exorcisms to the, yes, strange and wondrous animals. I’m glad I had the opportunity to visit a second time, because it allowed me to see differently and, I hope, to understand better what I saw. And it certainly helped that the very reason our dialogue team chose Madagascar as a destination was because the MLC subverts both Lutheran and Pentecostal expectations about the boundaries between our theological traditions and worship practices. To Pentecostals it said: a church can be charismatic and also confessional; to the Lutherans it said: a church can be confessional and also charismatic. During this second visit, I attended several more worship services led by mpiandry from the Ankaramalaza revival that Nenilava founded, and I found in the MLC bookstore a French translation of Zakaria Tsivoery’s biography of Nenilava. That was the seed of the book you are reading today.

If you have made it this far into the Introduction, then presumably you have sufficient curiosity to overcome the bewilderment and alarm that inevitably follows Westerners’ contact with these rather typical practices of African Christianity. As Jesus pointed out, you know the tree by its fruits. While the potential for and reality of abuse certainly exists wherever great power, and especially great spiritual power, is at work, the fact remains that Nenilava’s ministry and its outgrowths have done enormous good—good as defined by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

For this reason, Vigen and I have undertaken to bring, for the first time, a detailed account of Nenilava and her revival to an English-speaking audience. While some books and scholarly articles deal with her in passing (see the Bibliography), ours presents the first English translation of the closest thing we have to a firsthand account of her life and work, namely the aforementioned biography written by Zakaria Tsivoery, a pastor of the MLC to whom Nenilava entrusted her story. I made a complete translation of the French text into English and sent it on to Vigen to see if he’d be interested in coediting a volume about her, centered on this text. He had a copy of the Malagasy original and, in reviewing my translation, discovered certain liberties taken in the French translation. As a result, Vigen ended up going through my entire translation line by line to make it adhere more closely to the Malagasy original, and that is the version presented here.

Tsivoery’s account ends in the early 1970s, but Nenilava did not die until 1998. Therefore, to supplement the biography, Vigen scouted out primary sources in Malagasy to bring the story to its conclusion, which he reports in the second section of this book. In the third section, he expands the story to include the Ankaramalaza revival more broadly and its impact on the MLC, Madagascar as a whole, and the church throughout the world. We hope this book can serve as the primary source on Nenilava and the Ankaramalaza revival for the anglophone audience.

However, given what I’ve already reported here about Nenilava, a mere recounting of the facts as they have been passed along is insufficient. A further step needs to be taken toward interpreting those facts for a Western readership. Therefore, in the final section of this book, I will take up a number of neuralgic issues raised by the history of Nenilava: questions about evil spirits, miracles, healing and sin, emergent offices of ministry, and implications for Christians in the Western world.

But, for now, you should simply enjoy the ride through Nenilava’s astonishing life story!

Chapter 1: The History of the Ankaramalaza Revival (1941–1970)

—Zakaria Tsivoery

Preface

Dear readers, I had no intention at all of writing this history of the spiritual revival that relates to Volahavana Germaine (Nenilava). My motivation was the fruit of our meeting during her visit to Fort Dauphin in November 1963.

A short time after our conversation, I approached her and asked whether I could write the story of her calling from God. She told me that others had gathered material about it, but they had not distributed it to others, keeping it to themselves. Other writings appeared in the church magazine Ny Mpamangy, then in the book entitled Réveil spirituel à Madagascar (Spiritual Revival in Madagascar), written by Rajosefa Danielson, a retired pastor of Vatotsara, Madagascar. In fact, all these writings were incomplete and only tell certain parts of her story. But if you feel the need to write my history, she said to me, I will have the pleasure of delivering it to you. She let me know that it was not for her sake that she was authorizing me to publish her history, but because she was persuaded of the fact that the hearing and reading of these stories would do good, and no harm, to Christians.

I have well perceived the veracity of these tales in hearing them told: my heart was touched. Similarly, I believe that others’ hearts will also be touched in hearing and reading her history. This is what pushed me to make the decision to write and offer to you, dear readers, what I have received from Nenilava.

May God accompany you in your reading and may your life change, to the glory of God our Father alone.

Your friend,

Pastor Zakaria Tsivoery

Fort Dauphin

I. The Parents of Germaine Volahavana (Nenilava)

Germaine Volahavana was the daughter of Malady and Vao, who lived in Mandrondra, in the canton of Lakomby, which is in the district of Manakara. Their ancestral people group are the Antaimoro. Malady was a mpanjaka [petty king] of this clan and an ombiasa [diviner-healer] of great renown in his region.

Because of Malady’s fame, people came from all around to consult him. They came asking for wealth, a herd of zebu, or for children, for they believed in his powers. Because of the power of darkness at work in him, he was said to know in advance who it was that would come to him and why. Every time someone approached him seeking help, he practiced his sikidy [a form of divination by casting special stones or seeds and reading them].

Germaine Volahavana saw all these people who came to see her father. She watched her father closely during these consultations and observed the manner in which they proceeded. Each time that Malady indulged in his sikidy, he said that the charms were gods or spirits [andriamanitra]. From her earliest childhood, Germaine Volahavana did not like either divination or idolatry.

Every time her father engaged in his divination sessions, she would say, Where is this god to whom you speak with your charms? For I don’t like a god who cannot speak, who always needs a ‘mouth-piece’; and besides, God cannot be seen. She often made such comments to her father’s face, even doing so in front of those who had come seeking his services, which made her father very angry with her.

When she reached the age of seventeen, several suitors came to ask for her hand in marriage. She rejected all these offers of marriage because it had never crossed her mind to get married. When her father saw the character of her spirit, he was astounded and saddened, because these people whom she had rejected could have given her a peaceful life.

Her parents just didn’t understand how their daughter could refuse all these men who would have supported her and given her a peaceful life. So Malady gathered all of his children together and told them that Germaine must be possessed by a kind of spirit that considered her to be its own wife. That must be why she refused all marriage offers made to her! Therefore he consulted his charms. When he did so, Malady was quite shaken, for he had never before in his whole life seen such a thing. The charms had spoken to him and revealed that a great spirit, who is a great God, dwelt in Germaine and that is what caused her to refuse marriage altogether. But what totally amazed her father was what else he saw revealed by the charms. The charms said to him that he was a slave, but Germaine Volahavana was a queen.

This revelation completely amazed him, because what could possibly make his daughter a queen except that she had inherited the office from her father? On the other hand, if the father was a slave, that would make his daughter a slave also. Yet that was not what was revealed by his charms; rather, that he was a servant, while his daughter was a queen. What made his daughter a queen, her father decided, was because of the Spirit of God that was in her.

Thus Malady declared to all his children that the God of Volahavana was the one true God and above all the other gods whom he had served. So, I order all of my children to serve and follow this God. Those who do not follow him will be lost and will die eternally. And, from now on until my death, I will no longer engage in divination with my charms. Furthermore, I announce to you that two years after the rule [or spiritual work] of Volahavana has begun, I will die.

The words of her father came true, for two years after Germaine Volahavana began her work, her father died. This caused some persons not to believe that Germaine Volahavana was a messenger of God. They thought instead that the spirit that dwelt in her father had simply been passed on to live in her. This is not true, however, according to what we have seen in her and because of what we know of her spiritual works and her full and powerful preaching of the word of God, for the Lord worked in her. And they went out and preached everywhere, while the Lord worked with them and confirmed the message by accompanying signs (Mark 16:20).

II. Her Childhood and the Origin of the Voice That Called to Her

During the whole of her childhood, Volahavana was raised in the pagan environment of her parents. She was not yet a Christian when she received the call of God into his service. She was only ten years old at the time that Jesus chose her for his service.

From then on she had frequent dreams. In one of them, every evening a white man led her into a large building made of stone. One time she found herself alone in front of